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WM owns approximately 93 acres that adjoin an existing landfill area, and by utilizing those additional 93 acresWM will gain approximately 26 more years of time/space for dumping contaminated but non-hazardous waste.The waste, primarily from construction projects, will not come solely from Will County, but also from neighboring counties.​

The 93 acres are around the perimeter of an existing landfill area that includes a site called the “recker” site (not sure of thespelling) that contains hazardous waste. There are 37 corrective action wells in the area and 10 of them, all tied to therecker site, show contamination. Other areas of the existing landfill are newer and constructed differently so contamination isless of a problem. The wells are tested every 6 months and they are tested shallow, never deep. From what I gather it isnot possible to test deep and WM dismisses the possibility of contamination in the deep water.

The new 93 acre sites will be lined and the construction will be layered as follows: clay, gravel (?? or a fiber layer), more clay, ahard plastic liner, and then a fiber layer. Sorry, but that info is all from memory since I didn’t take notes on that. There will be access to a wellin the center of the “mound” for monitoring. Supposedly the clay in that area is of a superior type that will allow no leaching ofcontaminates to the area outside the landfill if by chance there is damage to the hard plastic layer. They claim blasting will not have animpact on the liner. In fact, they claim blasting has no impact on the existing 37 wells either but did admit activities such asfracking, if it were taking place in the area, could be problematic.

After the landfill has reached capacity it does not become a wasteland. The county can do reclamation work on it and make it into arecreational area, but the land area will be lost to residential and agricultural uses. Unfortunately, the recreational area will havesome nasty neighbors, including a crude oil storage depot.